| Re: Dialog_Pickfile Whack-a-Mole [message #81723 is a reply to message #81626] |
Sun, 14 October 2012 08:09   |
Yngvar Larsen
Messages: 134
Registered: January 2010
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, 12 October 2012 23:58:10 UTC+2, Mark Piper wrote:
> On Thursday, October 11, 2012 8:17:36 AM UTC-6, Yngvar Larsen wrote:
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>> For 10+ years, I've been wondering why IDL GUI programs must look like 1985. My guess was that nobody at RSI/ITT/Exelis cares because they all use Windows. But I would be glad to be proven wrong!
>
> I was hoping someone would bring this up, since it's the root of the DIALOG_PICKFILE issue. We need a new widget system in IDL. It will undoubtedly not be a drop-in replacement for the current widget system. Should the new system be a desktop system (using, e.g., GTK or Qt), or should it be webified (using, e.g., WebGL)? We need to think about this carefully; I don't want to develop something that will be obsolete in five years.
>
> What do you think?
Hm. Interesting. If you asked me 5 years ago, I would have said pick Qt or something else that works equally well on Windows/Mac/Linux. The new possibilities with web-enabled frameworks is exciting, but as David says, be careful and avoid picking something too esoteric.
In any case, don't be afraid to ditch compability with the current widget system. The current system has some nice features (hierarchy of event handlers), but all in all it can be a nightmare to work with (completely impossible to make a widget rescaling framework that works for both windows and unix, opaque integer "handles" instead of real objects, butt ugly on mac/linux, and so on).
> P.S. Most of my development is done on Linux. It's not so pretty, but it works.
Yes it somehow works, and personally I also don't really care about looks for my internal stuff. Showing Motif based stuff to customers on the other hand, makes you look out of date no matter how good the actual functionality is...
--
Yngvar
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